Guest Post by Alex Yates, who runs the “single shingle firm” Mad Man Marketing. Connect with Alex on LinkedIn http://www.linkedin.com/in/alexyates or follow on twitter @SmartAlexander.
When I first got hired as the community relations coordinator by a University’s satellite campus in southern California, I was surprisingly put in charge of that year’s commencement ceremony. The one dictum was that we were on a strict shoestring budget and booking any savings was preferred by my frugal campus director. Typically about 300 people show for this regional ceremony. It’s a basic stage set-up with chairs outside on a lawn at a scenic spot with a speech by someone who could hopefully get us some ink in the weekly newspaper. Being fresh on the job I wanted to impress and set my sights high.
I successfully recruited as our keynote speaker Anthony Thornley, the newest CEO of Qualcomm, the biggest employer in town; such a coup for a tiny campus like ours! We met him for breakfast at his spacious new office for a meet-n-greet to ensure he knew the parameters of our event. I welcomed him to dazzle us with any advice that would benefit our graduates. He was a very friendly fellow with smart anecdotes who hailed from London, so he even had a charming British accent which made us all think this was going to really class up the normally lackluster ceremony.
I was able to splurge a little more on food and drink, to the delight of my colleagues, because I chose not to hire a photographer since I have a really good camera and fancy myself as an amateur photographer. My cheap boss thought this was splendid!
The venue was impressive. I booked a small park on the cliffs of Pt. Loma overlooking the deep blue of the Pacific Ocean. One the day of the commencement everything seemed to come together; the sun was shining, birds were singing, and everyone was in good spirits. I was ready for the culmination of my efforts to come to fruitation and then end, hopefully, with a standing ovation.
After the pomp and circumstance entrance, I positioned myself at the end of the stage, allowing Very Important People to be seated front and center for maximum attention on them, and minimum attention on me. At every phase of the program I slid out of my seat, snapped a photo or two of the people being honored, and quickly sat down. It worked brilliantly. Professor of the Year? Out of my chair, click off a photo, return to my chair and plop down. Student of the Year? Out of my chair, click of a photo, return to my chair and plop down. Et cetera.
And then the keynote speaker began. Amazingly, he was dreadful! He mumbled incoherently into the microphone while giving us the tedious history of the computer chip created to build the company for which he was in charge. It was a complete snooze-fest. I was deflated. I sat there shaking my head in disbelief and how underwhelming he was. Such a forgettable moment after so much effort went into making it memorable. But I needed a photo of him for my press release which I had promised to send to a reporter of a community weekly newspaper since it would feature the new CEO of San Diego’s only fortune 500 company.
Mayhem erupted when I popped up to snap a few stock pictures of the speaker stoically reading his script and then plopped back down in my chair for the Nth time, whereupon my white folding chair had inched closer and closer with each up-and-down, had now scooted completely off the stage, sending me tumbling backward in a somersault, cap and gown go flying, and I land on my knees in the grass as 300 people burst into wild laughter at the welcome distraction!
The CEO takes this as his cue to end on a high note, oblivious to my theatrics, and moves to sit down. The audience, delighted he is finally finished, and still laughing at my misstep, jump up and give him a standing ovation! I only wish I had had the presence of mind to snap a photo of the CEO standing in an Alfred Hitchcock profile in front of a wildly cheering crowd.
A forgettable speech became the most memorable commencement in the history of the campus.
Ted Sorensen is dead, but President Obama cleverly resurrected his masterpiece, the JFK inaugural, during last night’s State of the Union Address. “Ask not what your country can do for you,” JFK told American citizens in 1960, “ask what you can do for your country.”
And last night Obama admonished corporate executives: “Ask yourselves what you can do to bring jobs back to your country, and your country will do everything we can to help you succeed.”
Obama’s SOTU line didn’t make a huge splash—an Internet search doesn’t reveal much discussion of it—but I guarantee there wasn’t a speechwriter who missed it. Maybe that line was designed to appeal to our small but powerful demographic. —DM
I’m working on a magazine story about Mitt Romney’s father George, and I ran across the clip—the clip!—where George claimed he’d had a “brainwashing” about the Vietnam War, by generals and the diplomatic corps. I had no idea the clip existed—or, that Mitt so resembles George in appearance and mannerism and even voice. It’s something to see. —DM
In a recent post on his well-read blog, marketing guru Seth Godin went after script-writing, pointing out that most people who are reading a speech don’t sound natural. His advice:
Learn to read the same way you speak (unlikely)
or, learn to speak without reading. Learn your message well enough that you can communicate it without reading it. We want your humanity.
If you can’t do that, don’t bother giving a speech. Just send everyone a memo and save time and stress for all concerned.
Naturally, a speechwriter isn’t gonna like that advice, and freelancer Erick Dittus goaded Godin on Facebook.
Well, well I finally read a Seth-bite and found him to be wanting. Yes, it’s extremely difficult “to read” a speech well. That’s why people do things called “practice” and “rehearse.” I know in the instant world of on-line, “talk from my heart” blogging that this may seem strange. But rehearsing, and then reading pieces of a well-written (for your voice) script or speech is probably the best way to go.
Great leaders from Abraham Lincoln, FDR, Truman, and Kennedy to Ronald Reagan and yes, even Dr. Martin Luther King, often worked from a script for major speeches. If you’re a marketer just selling goodies … to others who have never or rarely experienced a great speech … just talk that message. But if you wanted it to last a while, a well-written and well-practiced script is the way to go.
Dittus thinks I should respond to Godin, but I can’t say much more than he has here.
(Okay, one more thing: After I deliver my “Speechwriting Jam Session” of great speeches from history, someone inevitably comes up afterward and points out that most of the speeches I cite weren’t written by speechwriters, but by the speakers themselves. I shrug and I smile. Yes, the very best speeches occur when the speaker, whispered to by God himself, spontaneously streams pure literature from his or her mind and soul. It’s the rest of the speeches we’re dealing with, everybody. And deal with them—as speechwriters, as speakers, as audiences—we must.) —DM
If you watched last night’s primaries on CNN last night you saw something that I thought surely had been relegated to the “nice try” bin four or eight years ago.
It’s those real-time reaction lines, where men and women in the next primary state—South Carolina in this case—twist some Fisher-Price knobs one way to indicate the speech they’re listening to is making them happy, and another way to say it’s making them mad.
First, there’s the mind-splitting imbecility of the exercise. To acknowledge the difference between men and women and monkeys, shouldn’t people have a moment to think about how they feel about the candidate’s words? Or is it just, free market GOOD, entitlements BAD?
But even setting aside that objection as theoretical … For the life of you, you can’t see how the lines—different for men and women—correspond at all with the actual points the person is making. They go up while the crowd is cheering, down when the candidate is talking. They flatline when the candidate makes a ringing point, and they spike when he calls his campaign volunteers the best in the history of New Hampshire.
Wolf Blitzer—or “Blitz,” as Herman Cain and I call him—does a lot of silly things with a straight face. (Maybe that’s why the beard comes in handy.)
But as far as I’m concerned, this is the silliest. —DM
All writers should read aloud everything they write, and no writers know this better than speechwriters. (For instance, if I read the previous sentence aloud, I’ll change “know” to “understand,” so we don’t repeat “know” right after “no.”)
Last month former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan had a kind of review, in the WSJ, of the new Margaret Thatcher biopic Iron Lady.
In it, she slipped the surly bonds of readable prose:
“The leftist intelligentsia of her day, which claimed loyalty to and identification with the poor and marginalized, was shot through with snobs and snobbery. Underneath their egalitarian chatter was (and to some degree still is) a hidden, hungry admiration for and desire to be associated with the well-named and well-connected.”
Loyalty to and identification with … admiration for and desire to be associated with—in two consecutive sentences? Peggy, go back to your speechwriting basics and read your stuff out loud before you turn it in. —DM
Over the holiday break I read the new Kurt Vonnegut biography, And So It Goes, and was tickled to find a couple of references to Vital Speeches friend Bob Lehrman, who attended Vonnegut’s classes at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop in the mid ’60s. Lehrman, who would go on to write speeches for Al Gore and other luminaries, asked Vonnegut to sign a book.
Vonnegut obliged: “To Robert who, as a student of mine, would not change one fucking word of anything he wrote. He may have been right, but I doubt it. Anyway, love, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.”
As a speechwriter, Lehrman no doubt went on to take many edits from much lesser lights. But I think his youthful stubbornness was a good sign.
It’s obviously a practical necessity for speechwriters to deal gracefully with editorial advice from all manner of people in the organization. But it should never become a point of pride. Pride should be reserved for your brave and intellectually pure first draft. —DM
In the course of my globe-scouring search for the January issue of Vital Speeches International, I ran across a speech given at the Second International Conference on Afghanistan, in Bonn, Germany.
I date myself when I say the speech, delivered by Iran’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ali Akbar Salehi, reminded me of a certain Saturday Night Live skit from my youth.
For instance, Salehi says,
“The neighboring Afghanistan is a brotherly and friendly country whose stability and security is of critical importance for the Islamic republic of Iran. … The reconstruction of Afghanistan’s infrastructures and its overall development would underpin security throughout the country and , therefore, must be the center of attention the international community. The Islamic Republic of Iran continues to actively contribute to the reconstruction of Afghanistan and extends its hand for cooperation to all friendly countries to that effect.
“Unfortunately, during the past 10 years peace and security have not been restored in Afghanistan: the development of foreign forces in this country has not only failed to uproot terrorism but has rather caused this scourge to take hold even deeper.”
And who might those foreign forces belong to? Who has failed to fight terrorism, and in the course of doing so only made terrorism worse. Oh I don’t know. Could it be …
“That said, Iran strongly supports handing the security affairs over to the Afghanistan national military/police and departure of the foreign military forces. … It must be noted that certain western countries seek to extend their military presence in Afghanistan beyond 2014 by maintaining their military bases there.”
Now who could that be? Which western countries seek to extend their military presence in Afghanistan? Hmmm, I can’t even guess. Well, I’ll try.
“The Islamic Republic of Iran condemns violation of human rights by foreign military forces, including frequent attacks [on] residential areas, and urges the international community, particularly the Bonn conference, to be responsive toward such violations and take the necessary measures to halt the continuous violations of human rights by foreign militaries in Afghanistan.”
Which foreign military forces could he possibly be talking about? What foreign military would frequently attack residential areas? Could it be …
“In conclusion, I would like to highlight the Islamic Republic of Iran stand ready to actively participate in Afghanistan’s reconstruction programs and pray the Almighty to bless this brotherly and friendly country with stability, security and peace.”
My Kent State PR prof pal Bill Sledzik could bring rationality and a sense of consructiveness to a gang bang.
Which is exactly what he did last week when he led a discussion on his blog about the Public Relations Society of America’s cockamamie attempt to use crowsourcing to redefine the term “public relations.”
The whole thing reminded me of one of the very first assignments I had when I was a cub reporter at Ragan Communications. Quiveringly, I had to call all the giants of the PR business—Denny Griswold, Harold Burson, Jack O’Dwyer, Chester Burger and even Ed Bernays himself, who was only about 143 at the time—to ask them their definitions of public relations, for a story for The Ragan Report.
They were all amazingly gracious about getting back to me—at the time I didn’t realize that PR people, if nothing else, do habitually get back to reporters—and their answers were so dull that even my tape recorder fell asleep. Relationships with publics, blahblahblah, mutually satisfactory, blahblahblah, two-way symetrical, yadayadayada.
Twenty years later, I can tell you my definition of PR: PR is good, PR is bad, PR is ineffective, PR is cunning, PR is fatuous, PR is wise, PR is publicity, PR is action, PR is sinister, PR is craven, PR is a dirty window, PR is useful, PR is a noble instinct and PR is a stinking excuse. With it you’re damned, without it you’re doomed.
PR is what it is—whatever it is—and it is all these things every day, all day and everywhere, in agencies and in communication departments and in practitioners’ hearts.
To “define” PR is to write a hopeful epitaph for your career.
Which is fine for a Sunday afternoon, but Monday morning, it’s back to selling brassieres, the best way you know how. —DM
Postscript: This is a cross-post from my personal blog, Writing Boots. When it appeared there earlier this week, Chicago speechwriter Dan Conley Tweeted, “PR is propaganda. Everybody knows it, why don’t we just own up to it? Now let me return to making newspeak.”
